Firstly, you obviously have a very efficient process. Do you use multiple sanders, or switch belts out on a single machine? Work/grind in batches or take individual knives through completion? Have you tried to minimized the number of different grits used? Do you have a target number of knives per day? or week? What of the time you spend designing, accepting and filling orders, ordering supplies, talking to customers, shop maintenance and clean up, etc, etc? How much time does this take up in an average day, or would it average to per knife? i.e. what proportion of time is spent in shop production time vs other things? My initial thought is it would be fairly significant and thus require the shop rate per hour of production to need to be increased significantly to cover the other tasks.
As someone who came into this newest obsession from a smithing perspective, I have to ask what about forging vs stock removal? material / utility / equipment cost differences? time/efficiency per knife?
Right now I'm running just the single KMG grinder. I need another one to save on time spent changing the tooling on it out and to give room for greater production. Switching belts is fast but I'm thinking of putting a wheel brake on it to speed up the belt changes somewhat.
I really try to make at least two if not four or more of a given model if they're something I already have a pattern of. Sometimes I finish the blades and bolsters out then save the handle choice and finish for later. I make a lot of my small and mid sized carbon steel blades "by the bar", however many blanks fit on a 72" section of the steel as the high carbon is inexpensive and heat treats quickly. I run them through the final temper and have them ready to finish on demand which helps my turnaround on the more popular ones. I bet that the time savings working in batches is at least 10% if not more as changing out tooling and going from operation to operation, then cleaning up after really stacks up doing them one at a time.
Right now I've cut out as many grits as I can. All I have in stock are the Blaze, two backings of Norax, and a scotchbrite belt. Between 36-60 grit on the Blaze depending on what was the most cost efficient at the time of the order, to 3 grits of the Norax in both backs, 100, 45, and 16 micron, plus 5x in the flexible. I stock the black Ali-Gator grit paper from 180 to 2000 grit although I do need to get the red wet or dry style as the black will stain some handle materials. Standard progression is 5 grits, 60g-100x-45x-15x-5x. I've heard of guys taking as many as eleven grit steps.
If I start early, and stay focused, make it all "shop time" and leave the heat treating out of it with a raw to heat treated blank swap I can usually finish up a pretty nice knife and sheath in one entire day. That's my target and it amounts to a 4" hunter with a mirror polish and some stag. Figure 10-12 hours, focused, I can put down $250 to $300 in labor a day. I see half of that or less after taxes and shop costs so it's not the huge goldmine you might think. I usually start on the sheath about the time the handle glue-ups are drying so that task is pretty active with the current project as well. Now, I very rarely get that much accomplished in a day anymore plus other shenanigans. Figure how many knives you can finish and have ready to sell in 40 hours a week is a good goal if you're "full time" - of course it amounts to twice those hours with everything considered, though.
There are huge time sinks in custom design and all the support stuff. Couple of hours a day, averaged out I'd say. You'd have to break it down to minutes per task and get a large enough sample to average it accurately. For example, I can final QC, wipe down a knife and sheath, wrap it, box it with void fill, print the shipping label and drop it off at the Post Office in ten minutes. But that simple shipping task can take two hours, and it has, if my printer hangs up or PayPal changes their label format and I have to reinstall drivers or something ridiculous like that. Averages over a month or year are going to be where it's at. Some knives have zero design as I eyeballed them, drew a pattern and still manage to sell them in multiples - other times I'll have ten hours in a big expensive project with dozens of back and forth emails and several phone calls.
I'd like to be able to charge for every minute I put into the job but that's just not realistic right now. I could sell maybe a knife a year at the price that would demand - the $1400 hunting knife, for example. My $300 day of labor, when split up and divided between paying work and all the work it takes to be able to DO the work, comes out to perhaps $10 an hour take home after taxes, equivalent to $14.00-$15.00 an hour at my previous job. The interesting part of that is, I could hire an employee, or six and pay them a wage which would make them more per hour that I actually make at this early point, yet take a lot of the multiple tasks out of my hands and let me focus on the real profitable stuff, and we'd be by far the better for it. It's just a matter of getting the demand for that kind of volume. I'm trying to work on my infrastructure so to speak and so far it's paying off in spades.
Scott- I'm serious. Give me a PM. 2014 is going to be big and right now I'd tentatively call 2013 a "Success". I had some IRS issues that held back expansion for months but I kept the ship floating and with some of my production style pieces in the works I now am officially so far behind I cannot afford to ever stop. I hope I have the stamina and ambition to rise to the occasion.
